The Recommendation
by barbecuedphoenix
Summary: After intruders raze the library, the Guardian is finally promoted to the Light Guard as part of the library's new fulltime security staff, thanks to Valkyon's commendation. But her ex-captain gives her the silent treatment on their last day together, forcing the Guardian to consider the awkward truth on why she wants to leave the Obsidian Guard: it's not for professional reasons.


This was another anonymous request completed back in May 23, 2017 (not for Sin Week). And even though it's safe for work, the original prompt was... pretty convoluted: a four-way love rhombus in which the Guardian assumes Valkyon is in love with Ykhar, while he assumes she's in love with Kero... and even though they're both intensely attracted to each other, they encourage each other to pursue the other lovable nerds instead.

My first reaction: this love quadrangle is vaguely Shakespearean. And I have no idea how to write Shakespeare.

The story below is what I came up with instead.

* * *

 **The Recommendation**

The carpet of ash muffled the sound of books falling nine feet down from the shelf: a sequence of half-hearted thumps chasing after each other like a giant's dull heartbeat. Each inglorious landing raised a faint cloud of dead smoke from the carpet, lingering in a ghostly haze around what would have been the ankles and knees of evening visitors to the now-charred library. High on the blackened ladder that had miraculously survived the blaze, the Guardian wiped her nose—streaming from the woken soot—with the corner of her shirt collar, sighed to no one in particular, and continued gutting the shelf of books whose contents had been smoked black and shriveled from the heat.

Not exactly a cheery start to her new job here. But at least the real calamity began and ended well before she arrived.

From what the Light Guard was able to reckon, after days of sifting through the blackened char and following the thickest trails of cinders that curled through the library like a dragon's wake, the fire began in the dead of night when one of the lanterns fell. Onto what looked like a pyre of scrolls, broken shelves, wood shavings, and tomes crisped with age. That was erected, so they assumed from the scorch marks, at the foot of one of the largest bookcases of the library that housed all the atlases and geographical texts on the faery realm. A trail of what looked like finely-ripped parchment had paved the way to the other shelves.

No one knew why that lantern was still lit when it fell on the paper pyre in the dead of night. But if they had to guess, a certain man with the face of a dragon was behind it. If so, he was thoughtful enough to open all the windows when the fire began in earnest, inviting in the bone-dry autumn wind and setting up a theater of curling smoke and baleful red light for the midnight patrols at the Refuge.

It had taken sixteen Guardians, the rest of the night, and an old-fashioned bucket chain that stretched from the bathhouse and the fountains to the library, before a fire-free space could be cleared at the center of the floor for Ezarel to deploy what he only called the "Lung-Taker!" (singlehandedly making half the bucket chain groan, even as they were fighting the flames). A complex maana-timer was set, the doors and windows sealed tight, and the Guardians encouraged to drop their buckets and scatter to a safe distance throughout the fort. Before the miniature black hole at the center of Ezarel's rattling construct on the library floor awoke, expanded, and began sucking in the superheated air around it in its ravenous grab for matter and life, bulging the windows inward and asphyxiating the fires within moments.

After that, the very last step in their fire-fighting efforts that night was a triple dose of ginseng and macha tea, mostly administered to Miiko to calm her down. And the first thing the Head of the Guard did—once her voice returned—was to commission new locks for the seared doors and windows, and a round-the-clock posting of armed Guardians for the library itself.

The latter order was what brought the Guardian here to clear the soot-streaked shelves and take inventory, freshly plucked from the list of potential candidates for the Light Guard: the first, and so far only, retainer of the new title of Library Security. The former order was what brought her ex-boss squatting at the base of the new main doors of the library, his knees blackened with soot, his square-tipped, bronze fingers a blur as they swiveled and took apart the heads of the massive new orichalcum handles for the doors.

She dropped the last smoked book onto the pile on the floor, coughed an apology, and peeked at his back as her feet found the lower rungs of the ladder.

Valkyon had always impressed her with how many hands-on skills he knew but never spoke of. She didn't know where and why he learnt to smith locks, bolts, and everything else that could reinforce a door, but she was doubly-glad that he chose to volunteer his know-how this time. It may very well be the last time they spend an evening together. Though the ambiance could be better.

The Obsidian Guard commander had been strangely silent—more so than usual—ever since he arrived on the wane of the afternoon, bearing the crate of newly-forged locks, handles, bars, and bolts that gleamed a defiant red-gold in the ripening light. Kero had given up on making small-talk with him when his third joke on renaming their library 'the New Alexandria' was met with a noncommittal grunt. (She had to laugh for both of them.) When she volunteered to stay behind tonight, the bespectacled head of the library— her new supervisor—had only been too glad to beat it through the gutted main doors, leaving the ornery tasks of clearing the shelves and bantering with Valkyon to her.

So far, it had been two hours and zero progress on what she assumed was the easier job. If she didn't count his mechanical demonstration on how to disengage the window locks and drop hot pitch on whoever else tried to scale the wall from outside. Not even the prospect of hot tar in the arsonist's eyeholes drew a smile from him.

She bent to pick up the sooty books and dropped them four at a time on the gurney, wheels creaking with every new weight, her eyes still on her former boss's back and the brooding silence that clung to him. Even now, when he was nearly finished installing the new orichalcum teeth of the library's double-doors. If she didn't say something to him soon, who knew when her next opportunity was going to be, with their career paths diverging from this night on: her in the ashen library, and him on the field. If he had his way tonight, their last private conversation was going to wheel around how to trip the first emergency lock. Maybe followed by where would be the best place to stand and spear the first intruder to make her point.

"Valk?" her voice stretched out across the floor, like a tentative tap to the shoulder.

Another grunt. Screws and bars rang like clarions as they spun through their rings, joining the two faces of the handle on either side of the first, partly-finished door.

Already, her tongue was dancing back into her mouth. She bit her lip, sending her mind questing for something appropriate to say that would snag more than two words from him. Other than the inevitable 'good night' that squeezed a cold vice around her stomach.

Four more books down on the gurney; a puff of late smoke. Her voice was clear and careful when it came again. "…I was hoping to get the chance to thank you. For giving your recommendation—it really did help pave the way to the badge. Though I don't think any of us quite expected the job of 'Bodyguard for Books' to come with it."

If Valkyon sensed that little smile on her face, his answer made no show of it. "None of us expected arson _here_ ," he replied, flatly. "But there are worse jobs." The long nose of the screwdriver pivoted, impassive and quick, under his fingers.

She was in the middle of salvaging more smoked books from the floor, and questing for new ice-breakers, when the clink of the screwdriver stopped. Valkyon's elbows dropped, and he turned his head by a fraction to glance at her over his shoulder, his hard-hewn features a mask. "Make no mistake though," he added, his voice quiet, one tawny eye fixed on hers, the corners softening by a fraction. "It's not a job that Miiko would give lightly, and you've earned it. You have a mind for letters and the strength to protect. That's an extremely-rare combination. Kero's division will do well to have you here."

The blush began somewhere under her jaw and marched north until it reached the points of her cheekbones. "Thanks," she heard herself mutter, ducking her eyes back to the latest volume destined for the charcoal heap. It was, ironically, a paperback copy of 'The Ice People' from her world. "That's… really kind of you to say."

Her eyes lifted in time to catch that sudden frown darkening his brow, like a summer thunderhead, but it was gone as soon as it came. He turned his back to her and continued screwing in the first of the new door handles, the corner of his jaw working. Then it stilled. And then, an offhand remark, as dry and deadpan as a skull in the desert. "Kero, for all his good qualities, isn't someone who likes to take initiative. He's always afraid to impose. So if there's any initiative that needs to be made, it has to be from you."

It took a moment for the message to sink in, enough time for Valkyon to rise, take two steps to the hallway outside, kneel, and begin working on the other face of the door handle. Then a three-alarm blush rose from the embers of first and shot up to the roots of her hair. 'The Ice People' dropped and bounced feebly off the points of her boots. "What are y _-?_ Oh god, _no!_ " the Guardian heard herself splutter. "Kero and I are just good _friends_ …! There's never been anything between us. And he… certainly didn't give me this post because of any _favoritism._ It's a mutually-beneficial fit: he needs someone who can use a spear, and… I don't mind working in the library. That's all."

She bent down to pick up the paperback, fingers scraping up more soot from the floor in their haste, one corner of her mind trying to summon cool thoughts to tamp down the fire still lighting her cheeks. Some things never changed no matter how many worlds you hopped. Like office gossip. In her case, getting paired up with a colleague and encouraged to 'make it happen' never failed to fluster her. Doubly so when it came from Valkyon, of all people. She didn't want to know how long he had held onto that assumption in the three years she had worked for him.

The steady rhythm of clinks from the hallway stopped.

His voice, when it came again from behind the doors, was somehow even flatter than before. "Really? I hadn't known, judging from how much of your off-duty hours you spend with him. But I apologize for presuming."

"No, no, it's all right. I can understand why…" But even as her mouth shaped the requisite return, her eyes rose to his direction at his strange tone, and noticed something still stranger. Through the crack of the double-doors, the sliver of his face that she could see was compressed into a stony frown. His right shoulder and elbow were raised high, torqueing the bolts with unusual force. Just watching him, she was half-expecting to hear that sharp snap of broken screw or driver.

"Are you finding any trouble there? Do you need a hand?"

"No," came the reply from behind the door. Curt and quick, without even a glance inside the library.

As a former member of the Obsidian Guard, the Guardian was no stranger to taking some kicks in the line of duty. Conversational slaps, though, were on another level altogether. So she swept up the last of the soot-blackened books from the floor, piled them onto the gurney, and retreated deeper into the archives, the wheels of her escape vehicle still squeaking softly down the aisles as they rolled through the carpet of ash. As she wound her way through the silent, fire-scorched shelves– some toppled on their side, spilling crumbling scrolls and curled tomes onto the floor, others shifted at strange, skewed angles from their original spots, marked as clean arcs through the ash, from the pull of Ezarel's trapped singularity—she was suddenly, bleakly thankful that her new job would involve meeting a scant number of people outside her colleagues in the archives.

Negotiating, or to be honest, _talking_ with people was never her forte. Valkyon had been one of the very, very few people she felt safe enough to approach at any hour since arriving in El. But today seemed determined to up-end plenty of old beliefs and comforts.

Whatever it was, whatever she said, had hit the wrong nerve. And it was better if she gave him some space to cool down before she tried again to say goodbye on a lighter note. She didn't need Ykhar's gloomy imagination to tell that it may be months before they could find time to see each other again in private. Those crazy lunch rushes, the lazy evenings by the fountains after sparring, with two cold mugs of beer–smuggled out of the canteen– always ready in hand once he joined her, the weekend beach runs and hikes with their familiars were now, one and all, relics of the past.

At the back of the library, in the restorer's cell that was one of the few places untouched by the fire, with only the faintest patina of smoke smeared on the bright walls, the Guardian emptied her load of ruined books into the fourth crate in the room. There were still four others left before they could cart them down to the gardens, where the ash would be broken up further to be mixed into soap and fertilizer for the clinic's nursery of faery-born medicinal plants.

She sighed again, wiping her hands on her stained jersey, casting her eyes through the cramped office that smelled like a pyre. Until they alighted on a new book on her desk. Its pages still apple-crisp yellow, and intact. Sitting on top of it was a little note in Ykhar's careful, curling script, punctuated with a cartoon smile, asking her to loan it to Valkyon the next time she saw him.

At once, the knot between her ribs constricted into a still-smaller snarl. The cartoon smile did nothing to help.

There were two invincible reasons why she never dared to ask Valkyon out for something more than a friendly drink in all these years. One was that she'd rather take a javelin to the stomach or wrestle an insane hamadryad rather than to tell the man she admired straight out that… she saw him as more than her captain. The other reason was that she knew he was already taken. At least tacitly.

Not even a social cripple like her could miss what his tardiness meant whenever he crossed paths with the red-haired brownie en route to the fountains, until their beers arrived more lukewarm than chill. The number of favors he ran for her personally without flinching. The books and other little keepsakes that wound up on his desk; luxuries that stood out like lit powder-kegs in his spare, Spartan office. The odd details he knew about her that made him smile, and the way he could calm her down with just two words whenever she looked green enough at a clerical error to empty her breakfast on her shoes… No, the Guardian knew early on that she couldn't compete with sunny, erudite, scrupulous, lovable Ykhar, who had known Valkyon for years before the day she dropped in like an unseasonal thunderbolt in the Grand Crystal Chamber.

Though keeping her silence would be harder now in the Light Guard, when she would be brushing shoulders most hours of every day with Ykhar. Who was prone to throwing around jokes about her latest run-ins with Valkyon and what embarrassing little details she had spilled in the yielding space of his silence. At least _she_ still got to meet him, always scurrying around HQ with a satchel of messages and newsletters that never managed to deplete itself, disarming everyone she met with her upbeat updates and random trivia. In contrast, the Guardian was practically chained inside the library just in case someone decided to throw another midnight bonfire here.

But. She didn't officially start her new job until tomorrow. And Valkyon was still here, though only just, the air above him practically dark and rumbling with his dourness.

So the Guardian smoothed out the twist in her mouth and picked up the new peace offering from the desk. It was Eldaryan, with a title and author she didn't recognize. She was careful to crumple Ykhar's note and drop it inside a crate of eventual fertilizer before walking out of the cell, threading her way back to the library's foyer.

Valkyon was already packing up his tools by the finished double-doors, the broad span of his hands folding in and shutting the many-chambered chest with his usual, brisk efficiency, his expression back to a tamer taciturnity. He paused only once when the Guardian stopped dead in front of him, and held out the book at the level of his eyes.

"I was in the back, and well… Ykhar wanted me to give this to you."

A rise of his snowy eyebrows. "Ah. Thank you." The flash of recognition in those eyes tempted her to drop the book on top of his tool chest like a hot iron and be done with it.

"You know, with the library the way it is, I should really be confiscating this book," she joked, passing the gift into his hands with fingers that curled like springs. "We need everything and anything to fill these shelves again."

"Then you'll have this back soon," came his calm reply as he straightened up, tool-chest in one hand, empty crate under another arm, the book pinched between the side of his ribs and the gutted box. "I don't always have the time to finish the books she loans me. But the thought is appreciated. And it's nice to be introduced to a new author, now and then."

The words spun out before she could stop them. "You could always tell her that your schedule is tight–" But when the bemused light woke in his eye, she stopped short, almost biting her own tongue with how quickly her jaw snapped shut. Now was not the time. Besides, their situation was well out of her hands now; a concern that she no longer had the time, space, or right to pry into.

So the Guardian tried again, her eyes studiously avoiding his, her voice light and ginger as she pulled open one door for him. The counterweight dragging her arms into a slow-motion pull was a testament to his thoroughness; not even a minotaur with a battering ram could breach these doors. "Sorry. I'm sure she appreciates you reading all the material she brings you. Although… speaking as someone in the same camp as her, she might appreciate it more if you took her out for dinner sometime." She chanced a tiny smile at their lopsided reflections in the curve of the polished handle. "Maybe slip a note inside that book when you return it? That's the only way to snag her attention and make her sit still, sometimes. But you really can't go wrong with someone like her."

Valkyon made no move to step past her. Raw puzzlement lanced through his eyes as he stared fixatedly at the Guardian. His reply sounded as though it came from a long way inside his chest, the letters forming slow and deliberate on his tongue. "…If what you say is true, then I never noticed. And either way, I can't return the sentiment. If it is there."

The stare that she returned was on par with his. Her expression froze, and as heat coiled through the roots of her hair again, she let her wide eyes slide slowly past his right ear to stare at the seared paint on the walls, at the long bar of pink marking the spot where a bookcase, too close to Ezarel's singularity, used to be. Anything, really, but her former boss.

"Oh," she went, in a lighter voice still.

When he said her name, her eyes snapped back to him on their own volition. Just in time to catch the tick of that flinty half-smile that disappeared in a blink, as though it was never there.

"Your good intentions aren't exactly needed," Valkyon intoned dryly, his amber-bright eyes on hers untouched by that split-second smile. "I'll be all right. Good luck with your new job." And with that, he side-stepped through the gap of the door— a veritable wall of armor and leather himself, toting two hefty boxes and a book— without another word. Leaving the Guardian staring stupefied at his back and wondering what in the world he meant by that parting shot.

It wasn't until she pushed the door shut, heard the heavy tumble and click of the new catch that the silence hit her hard enough to squeeze the breath from her lungs. Her forehead fell in natural consequence against the door, still smelling like the forest.

She had wasted three years waiting for a vacancy to show up at his side and the courage to ask him out to possess her, until their daily routines and little escapes bled together into a constant ache in the back of her ribs. Bringing her into his office just last month with a formal transfer request to the Light Guard: to join the fulltime security here, away from the grounds that routinely saw his tall shadow. Now, it would take the Oracle herself to predict when she would run into him again, for long enough to exchange more than fleeting hellos. Their daily routes ran parallel now; their schedules almost total inversions of each other.

For the first time in her memory, she wished that she had mortified herself weeks ago.

* * *

The windows had darkened into a grid of jet-black mirrors, spangled with stars and the soft blaze of lamps, by the time Ykhar came jogging into the library, out of breath as usual.

Or rather, to the doorstep of the library. When the Guardian heard her distinct huffing from the entrance, she glanced up to find a pair of auburn ears twitching helplessly behind the edge of one door, the rest of her petite colleague pincered between one mammoth door and the next. She reluctantly curled out of her armchair by the window to free her.

"Crying Chrylasms…!" the brownie panted once the Guardian pulled the first door open; she staggered forward with her hands on her knees, her face a few shades shy of matching her hair. "I'm not getting paid enough for this kind of exercise… Running _sixteen_ laps around the place since morning and now extra weight-lifting just to get back to my desk? I might as well join the Obsidian Guard!"

"Yeah, you'll do pretty well there," the Guardian injected, without humor. The door shut with a concussive thud. But Ykhar was already making a beeline to the armchair she just left—the one chair in the library that smelled the least like smoke and charred twill. Her messenger bag wheezed into the dust as she sank into the cushions, groaning once, before rubbing her feet through her socks.

The Guardian decided that she was better off standing now. Or retreating to the new bunk they fitted for her in the back of the library. "I was just about to lock up. Do you need anything?"

Two arms waved briefly from the armchair. "Oh you know, the usual: a vacation, maybe ten thousand more maana, longer legs, a hot tub with lavender-scented bubbles to soak them in, a nice book that isn't a more solid form of ash…" Suddenly, the brownie's scarlet ears perked high, and a taut smile peeked at her from around the frayed back of the chair; her chipper voice rose two notches higher. "Speaking of which… did you give my book to Valkyon already?"

On a marginally-different night, if she had more energy left, the Guardian would have said no. "Sure, I did," she went mechanically, shrugging. But that smile from the brownie sparked a tired burst of anger- at herself for never saying the right words at the right times- that hit like a splash of acid in the chest. So she went on, turning aside to rub her thumb over an imaginary spot of tarnish on the door handle, hiding the pinch of her eyes. "He doesn't always have the time to read them from cover to cover. Just to let you know."

"Don't we all? I didn't even get midway down my list before this place sizzled like a phoenix's barbecue. Excuse my language." Then Ykhar's face popped around the back of the chair again, in a frown, her gray eyes narrowing. "So… did you just hand it to him with a 'here-it's-from-Ykhar-take-it-before-I-get-bored'? Or did you at least ask him what he thought of the title? Or the author? If he's read something like it before?"

The Guardian kept her eyes firmly trained on the door handle, imagining a healthy patina of imaginary rust and scratches there for her hand to rub clean. Her neck was burning red for the brownie's sake now. "No, it didn't occur to me. But Ykhar… have you considered that maybe, by this point, Valkyon might only be interested as a friend? Though he certainly appreciates the books you like to loan him–"

" _What?_ "

"I'm sorry; it's just something I noticed–"

"Are you _trying_ to patronize me?"

Now the Guardian swiveled ninety-degrees to face the windows. And saw that Ykhar's head was poking full from the top of the armchair, her mouth compressed to trembling line, her gray eyes opening wide like the points of mirrors to sear her from across the floor. From her expression, it looked as though Mery holding a lit torch and a bottle of ether by the door would be an improvement compared to what she was seeing now.

"No, I… only slipped him a suggestion to… just ask you out. Considering how long you two have known each other and… Never mind, it was an honest mistake. I never meant to embarrass either of you–"

But judging from the way the brownie was now burying her face in her hands, embarrassment had already pulled out of the station at a runaway gallop. The Guardian's mouth clamped shut before her words could vandalize more egos; nothing she said tonight was helping.

After long, uncountable seconds, Ykhar's eyes resurfaced from the cup of her hands, which rose still higher to rake through her coppery hair. She wasn't looking at her any longer, her voice simmering down to a heated whisper that crossed the room like a tea-kettle's sullen hiss. "…Jumping Draflayels. I never thought I'd find myself working with someone _this stupid._ "

This time, the Guardian's spine stiffened like a yanked chain at that ring of challenge; the fingers of her right hand twitched for a heartbeat to the short spear slung across her back. "I'm sorry," she reiterated, flatly, her expression sharpening into the simpler, more pointed look that she saved for long campaigns. "It was an honest mistake. Valkyon didn't take any of it personally, if it makes you feel better."

But the brownie responded by suddenly jumping out of her chair and bearing down on her in short, quick strides, spear-woman for a colleague and sixteen laps around HQ be damned. "Oh _stop it_ already before you give me an aneurysm with your…!" She sucked in a breath through her buck-teeth and stopped until she was two feet away from the Guardian, her fists planted on her hips, her eyes about as warm as the warped windows on the night of the blaze. Her words, when they returned, jabbed into the taller woman at a school-teacher's tempo.

"I left that book on your desk in the first place so _you_ could give it to Valkyon. Think about it: if _I_ wanted to be the one to offer it to him, I would have done it any day of the week. For what good that ever does for me. But _you_ are going to be stationed here almost all hours of the day, practically every day. That book was _my_ favor to _you! You_ , the one woman here who shouldn't _need_ an excuse to talk to him. But it sounds like I'm knocking on a rock instead of a Grookhan. Asking him to- honest to the Goddess…! I don't why I bothered…"

Ykhar didn't wait for the spots of heat to grow on the Guardian's cheeks. Instead, she shook her head and strode back to the armchair, skirt swishing, whitewashed curses dissolving into pointed sniffs and emphatic 'you's. Still ignoring the Guardian's stare at her back as she snatched up her satchel and disappeared into the maze of soot-streaked shelves.

At this point, the Guardian seriously debated her chances of avoiding Ykhar tonight if she tried to sneak back to her bunk. Because it would be a good estimate on her chances of playing the guardian ghost for the next week.

Of all the things she had to get right, it had to be the brownie's own affections for her ex-captain.

Only a few moments passed before Ykhar's voice, still pitched with disbelief, rang out from somewhere down the middle aisle, and continued to wind down the maze of shelves to the back offices. "...You should know: you weren't the one I actually wanted to help when I dropped off that book. Because giving his personal recommendation for you to join the Light Guard, and then his permission to leave your post under him, was one of the hardest things Valkyon ever did. But he did it for you. And then he was rewarded with _that_ kind of assumption, that suggestion to chase someone else? Really! I don't know why _he_ bothers…!"

Whatever Ykhar had left to say didn't make it back to where the Guardian was standing, partially because the acoustics of ash and clustered bookcases finally won out. But mostly because the Guardian could barely hear herself, when her throat shut on hearing that _Valkyon hadn't wanted her to leave his division._

The fierce cinnabar gleam of the arcs in the door drew her eyes, focused them to the present. Down their curves—each as thick as a man's wrist–, then along the rows of bolts running lateral and vertical across the twin doors, threatening to conjoin them under pressure from the outside, to the contorted eye of the keyhole that hinted at still more twisted mechanisms hidden under the heavy oak panels. These were the borders of her new life laid down by his hands only hours ago. Which she would be polishing, testing, locking, and unlocking each morning and night for who knew how many more years, holding down this wing of the fort and—in case of dire emergency—sealing herself and her eventual staff inside to save their last receptacle of knowledge if the fort fell under siege. In all events, far from the Obsidian Guard and the man who never said he never wanted her to leave. Who—on the day she told him her application had been accepted—hadn't even cracked one smile.

She was moving again in a blink, kicking up the ashes on the floor as she tore down the aisles after Ykhar, her stomach knotted like a Musarose nest, for the first time ready to weather any and all indignities that the brownie could throw at her. Without an answering spear.

Those three years at his side were gone; out of reach now. And she still didn't know when, where, or how to find him again with their jobs as they were, new routines and protocols cementing under new fears. But there was one tradition—one predictable path between these archives and the Obsidian Guard barracks– that seemed to weather all these changes. And it was being kept under lock and key by a very loyal, and very irate, red-haired brownie.

She hoped that she would be in a good enough temper to hear her new apology.

 **FIN**

* * *

 _Disclaimers:_

\- This story follows an alternate timeline in which the library was razed through good old-fashioned flint, tinder, and fire about three years after the Guardian's arrival. Which, frankly, is a more feasible way to destroy an archive than a demon in a returning library book. In the game though, they didn't compensate with full-time security living in the library itself.

\- We don't know what the Absynthe alchemists use to snuff out fires in the lab. But I can see some uses for a miniature black hole (besides being a questionable food source for familiars).

\- Ezarel in the game genuinely loves giving corny/borderline-insulting nicknames to others. It won't be a stretch for him to do the same for dangerous lab equipment.

\- We still don't know how aware Valkyon is of Ykhar's affections in the game. Or if he's playing obtuse on purpose. So in this story, I let Ykhar wise up a little faster.

\- Kero is the complete innocent in this love quadrangle. He doesn't notice the Guardian in a romantic way (or Ykhar either for that matter), and doesn't have the slightest clue why Valkyon is leveling death glares in his direction these days. He's getting a little frightened, but that's a story for another day.

As always, if you enjoyed this story (and even if you didn't) don't hesitate to leave a review. I'm always open to feedback.


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